Small Business productivity during summer months

It’s vacation time. The kids are out of school, and every one has summer on the brain. How does one Small Biz Owner counteract low-energy and productivity? Sherean will offer insights, tips, tools and specific examples. Sherean Malekzadeh Allen, internationally recognized advertising, sales and marketing expert, is Founder and President of New Thought Marketing, Inc.

She feels that some of the causes of low productivity in a small business are as follows:

Burnout / Stress- According to the American Institute of Stress, 40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful, and 26 percent of those workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work.”

NTM / Sherean counteracts these low productivity triggers by creating an environment that is flexible, supportive, and creative. NTM understand that businesses have a tremendous impact on their environment. They believe it’s their responsibility to minimize that impact and practice good green policies. Technology also plays a major part…

Environment: creating an environment that is dynamic and flexible to her employees’ lifestyle, but still receptive to the business needs.” NTM is not any less competitive, and everyone is just as serious about their work as if they were still at their super corporate jobs. NTM is focused on Work-Life Balance. NTM is a kid friendly environment.
Non-toxic cleaning: They have selected a janitorial services company that uses only non-toxic, green-friendly cleaning supplies.

Creativity– NTM injects creativity into its modus operandi, especially when dealing with employees. It is important to have employees with hybrid skill sets. For example, during slower months such as the summer, the NTM team is always engaged because they all share equal responsibility in a project- they do not operate in a silo.

Flexibility– Employees are a business’ lifeblood. Creating flexible work options such as Telecommuting and Job Sharingfosters an environment that addresses individual needs/concerns, celebrates team work, increases productivity and even enforces social responsibility. All of NTM employees telecommute at least part of the time. They’ve found this to be not just good environmental policy, but good business. NTM employees are happier and more productive by incorporating telecommuting in their actions.

Recycle/Reduce: In addition to recycling paper, NTM strive to manage all accounts electronically so we don’t use much paper in the first place. Their book keepings are happening online and the book keeper only comes for meeting.

Commercial Printers: While NTM use a variety of printers, the one they contract with most often uses vegetable-based inks (primarily soy), paper that is produced from 60% recovered paper, and paper that is milled without harmful dioxin.

You can take advantage of today’s technology. Equip your employees with the right tools. Webinars and podcasts are excellent for business development and meetings with clients. Social networking is excellent for recruiting and initiating strategic alliances. Embrace the new tools created to increase productivity for your industry.

Some example of great tools include:

Social Media Productivity– Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Another productivity tools is Joomla. Both are Free software packages.

Clearspace– Clearspace is enterprise collaboration software built from the ground up for teams, companies, and communities looking for an easy and productive way to work with each other — without time or location limitations. Eliminate redundant conversations, meetings, emails, and ideas by opening doors to new co-workers, partners, and customers.

Webinars / Podcasts are great for business development and meetings. Software such as Adobe Connect or Webex make the transition to virtual meetings dynamic and easy to create.

Linkedin– is great for recruiting and networking and building strategic alliances.

GroupHub or Basecamp are excellent tools for project management. Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create client/project extranets. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project. GroupHub is a creative design community. A collection of individuals and businesses drawn together by a desire to create, design and innovate.

You can plan your meetings and events at Open Table or Cvent. OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants. This is an ideal place for lunch meetings. Cvent provides Online Software for Event Management, Web Surveys, Email Marketing, Reservations, listings and ticket sales.

ACT CRM is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps you organize contact information, manage daily responsibilities, and communicate more effectively to improve your productivity. With over 2.7 million users and 41,000 corporate customers, ACT! is renowned for being easy to learn and use, and is an effective solution for anyone who regularly works with contacts.

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen – A biography
Sherean Malekzadeh Allen, internationally recognized advertising, sales and marketing expert, is Founder and President of New Thought Marketing, Inc. She is one of the early internet marketing pioneers, award-winning writer and television producer. Media and world-class companies including FOX, PC Magazine, CNN International, Jones Lang LaSalle, IBM, CBS and MTV have featured Sherean’s work and continually seek her expertise for real-world solutions to maximize market opportunities; integrate new media and digital marketing strategies.

About New Thought Marketing:

New Thought Marketing was founded as Sherean Malekzadeh’s way of sharing smart people with companies she believes in.

The consultants give clients the marketing and sales tools to grow. They really love working with second-stage entrepreneurs: successful companies beyond the start up phase who now want more. NTM graduate them to the next level, and then train them to stay on course with their own people.

NTM do it while balancing life and work. Since founding the company in 2001, Sherean has collected senior level marketing, advertising, sales and creative folks who simply want to adjust their work schedules to make room for family or themselves. So instead of being tied to one company, or out of the workforce entirely, they work for the clients.